[Paul listens to Oscar declare himself a martyr with a sense of foreboding he knows better than to call illusory. The teeth of a trap cast shadows over both of them at the edges of his vision-beyond-vision, sea-damp fingers tracing the pearls of his spine up to his neck, curling with skin-prickling cold into the soft hair at its nape.

He makes a warding symbol with his left hand, a brief suggestion of an eye between fingers and thumb, and he holds his inner eye shut with a wrenching bile-brine trickle at the back of his throat.]

I'd like us to be.

[Perhaps that's why his soft voice has a momentary rasping quality before he swallows it down, shaking his head as if clearing it of some clinging dust.]

But I'd prefer it not cost you so much. [He half-laughs, or something like it, a rustling breath out.] I underestimated your commitment, Oscar. I underestimated a lot of things about you.

I don't know where that leaves us. I'd prefer not to point a gun at you, willingly or not. For one thing, I don't think Ruby would approve. So what do you want me to do?

[He means this question too, maybe even more than the last one.]